So, now that I've bashed the whole idea of serendipity in an earlier post and stressed the importance of both "good enough" discovery and teaching users to effectively utilize the tools we give them, I'm going to go off in a totally different direction and write about something completely whimsical. The terrific article by Patrick Carr that I referenced in my earlier post mentioned a site called Serendip-o-matic. Serendip-o-matic bills itself as a Serendipity Engine that aims to help the user "discover photographs, documents, maps and other primary sources" by "first examining your research interests, and then identifying related content in locations such as the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Europeana, and Flickr Commons."
How does the Serendipity Engine work? You paste text into its search box--from your own paper, an article source, a Wikipedia entry, or anything else that seems like a useful place to start--and click the Make some magic! button. The application extracts keywords from that text snippet and looks for matches in the metadata available from its sources, returning a list of loosely related content (mostly images at this point in its development).
The idea behind Serendip-o-matic is the very opposite of most search engines or discovery systems, which seek to deliver results that are as relevant as possible. In fact, the whole point of the Serendipity Engine is to deliver the unexpected, yet somehow related, item that will loosen the writer's block, send the mind whirling in a fresh direction, or make the connection the brain sensed but couldn't quite reach.
Metadata makes magic! Try it and see what you think.
I love this! I especially love that it's pretty. It's a beautiful, clean, simple website. I think presentation can sometimes be overlooked, but I do think it matters. It imbues a sense of authority (which is obviously not always a good thing from an info lit perspective).
ReplyDeleteSo, magic has come to the library. This should mean I'm getting a letter to Hogwarts soon :)
ReplyDeleteI did "single ladies" and the photos that came up involved a man in a recliner.
UA hosted a Digital Humanities conference/forum/get together (there is a name to the conference but my mind just went totally blank) a few years back and someone mentioned this site.
Thank you for posting about this! I had heard about Serendip-o-matic a few times, but until I read this post, I'd never actually taken the time to use it. I typed in some search terms related to my thesis topic, and the results were interesting (and amusing). Also, I second Latasha's comment about waiting for my Hogwarts letter to come (it will happen!).
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping that Hogwarts degree will qualify me for a sweet gig in the library at Unseen University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unseen_University) :)
ReplyDeleteGood post and comments!
ReplyDeleteI still like to point out the "'facilitated' serendipity" that occurs in the book stacks ... not only by way of books shelved together (and the mobility of carried books), but also the "'facilitated' analytical serendipity" afforded by the internal structures of books, namely, the ToC, book index (non-fiction), and the page numbers that brings the hole serendipity engine together. Plus, this serendipity engine works in all libraries :-)